Zooarchaeological investigation of the Hoabinhian exploitation of reptiles and amphibians in Thailand and Cambodia with a focus on the Yellow-headed tortoise (Indotestudo elongata (Blyth, 1854))

Abstract

While non-marine turtles are almost ubiquitous in the archaeological record of Southeast Asia, their zooarchaeological examination has been inadequately pursued within this tropical region. This gap in research hinders a complete comprehension of past human subsistence strategies and economies, as only a limited number of comprehensive studies encompassing all the taxa found in archaeological sites have been conducted thus far. This constraint becomes particularly significant in relation to prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations, who might have extensively utilized inland chelonian taxa. In order to initiate a new approach to the study of past human-turtle interactions in Southeast Asia, we propose an in-depth zooarchaeological analysis of turtle bone remains recovered from four Hoabinhian Hunter-gatherer archaeological assemblages located in Thailand and Cambodia, dating from the Late Pleistocene to the first half of the Holocene. Our study focuses on the bone remains attributed to the Yellow-headed Tortoise (Indotestudo elongata) as it is the most represented taxon in archaeological assemblages in the region of study. For this species, we developed osteometric equations enabling the estimation of the carapace size of the archaeological individuals. This allowed us to study the size structure of the archaeological populations at different sites and to reveal the human exploitation strategies of these animals. We observed a significant taphonomic homogeneity among the studied assemblages, along with similarities in the diversity of hunted reptile and amphibian taxa as well as the size of the exploited tortoises. These findings suggest consistent subsistence behaviors across distinct sites, despite their varying environmental conditions, and raise the possibility of cultural similarities across different periods and regions. Additionally, we provide a baseline for future zooarchaeological studies and a methodological framework for the detailed analysis of archaeological turtle bones in continental Southeast Asia.